Of all the defenses against 1.e4, the Sicilian Defense has always been top-scorer since the last past decades. A search of 100,000 games from international competition shows that the Sicilian Defense yielded Black 30.3% wins and 34.9% draws. Quite an impressive result for the second player especially against high-level opponents who know how to optimise and exploit their opening initiatives.

As one of the mainline variation of the Sicilian Defence, the Dragon Variation is a sharp and reliable defence opening. I personally like the Dragon Variation as Black because it is rich in tactical themes and most of the position gives you promising end game prospects (because in the Sicilian, Black has more center pawns than White). It is also much easier to learn than the Sicilian Najdorf Variation because the plans and strategies are more direct and straight forward. Owing to the resulting sharp and unbalance positions, Black optimizes his chance to play for a win in the complications. Experience has shown that most White players get caught-out from these complications where a minute tempo is very crucial for survival.

With other Dragon Systems, Black can confuse his opponent by adopting crafty move orders to trick him into a transposition where Black is favourable. Good examples of this tricky move orders are the Accelerated Dragon and the Hyper Accelerated Dragon where both aims to side-step the theoretical richness of the Yugoslav Attack.

Need more convincing to play the Dragon? Have a look at the following games and see how you can win with Black using this opening.